


Of Sailors, Detectives and Lovable Pooches

by Melethril



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: AU Tag, Angst, Episode: s02e08 Lapa'au (Healing), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, MWDs, Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 01:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17397383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melethril/pseuds/Melethril
Summary: AU Tag to the episode 2x08 Lapa'auaThere are dog people and cat people. That's not Steve's problem, though, as Danny finds out the hard way.





	Of Sailors, Detectives and Lovable Pooches

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by all the H50 fan fiction writers who have pointed out how important MWD's are, also for SEALs.
> 
> Specifically, I want to mention KatieTaylor's story "Vacation's Over" and "Puppy Love" by MissSlothy for Nayra.

If he had to look at Steve’s aneurysm face just one more time, he would lose it. Danny just knew it. He was at the end of his patience. The dog was just there; he did no harm (except for that small – okay, big – accident in Steve’s office, but that was just because Steve was being a jerk with the dog), so this was just another example of Steve the Control Freak who was about as annoying as Police Brutality Steve though not quite as insane as Steve the SuperSEAL.

“Alright,” Steve lifted both hands. “This is what we’re going to do. Kono and Chin, you check with the lab see if any other evidence showed up from the victim’s apartment. Special Agent Morrison, you, Lori and I will go through all of Monica’s notes again. There could be something we’re missing. Danny, you will finally bring the mutt to a shelter before you catch up with us…”

“Excuse me,” Danny exploded, his hand protectively on the lovable pooch’s head. “What is your problem, Steven? No wait! There is a whole list the length of a phonebook with all the things wrong with you. I actually have them ordered alphabetically. So let’s narrow it down to dogs. What’s your problem with dogs? What could a dog possibly have done to you? They are loyal, kind and they love you no matter what. They look up to you and never ever want to disappoint you. So what kind of twisted logic makes you look at this wonderful animal and think ‘creature I don’t want near me’? I don’t even…” he wildly gestured around. “The dog just lost its owner; he’ll never see her again. Should I have brought him to a shelter where the likelihood of an adult dog finding a home is slim at best? Is that what you would have done? Or would you just shoot him? Because that’s Steve McGarretts all around approach.”

Steve flinched and the New Jersey detective knew he had gone too far. Before he could apologize, however, Steve already stood tall and cold, and Danny hated to see him retreat into his shell, especially with the knowledge that he had induced that.

“Yes, they are dependent on us,” Steve snapped. He sounded distinctly ‘commander’-like. “They trust their handler so much they would walk right into the line of fire if asked. And because as a commanding officer, the handler looks to me, the dog sees me as pack leader. Imagine having to send this pup,” he pointed his finger at the dog, who tilted his head in confusion, “into a situation you know might kill him and you just pray it doesn’t. It’s like sending a kid to the frontlines. It doesn’t matter how well trained they are or how much we see them as fellow sailors. No matter how much we need and trust them, they’re basically just children trusting us to keep them alive and guess what? Sometimes, we just can’t. In my whole career, my team lost two canines.” Steve’s eyes were wide and full of dark memories. And Danny hoped he would stop. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw Lori’s face lowered, Kono covering her mouth and Chin’s compassion. Morrison stared at Steve, obviously not having expected that, but then, neither had Danny. “One to gun fire as he protected another member of the team – and let me tell you, restraining the handler so they don’t go after their dying partner while ducking machine gun fire is not my idea of fun. The other one we lost because of a grenade. Daisy was our favorite. It would have been one of her last missions. She always recognized danger before we did. She noticed the presence of hostiles and warned us just in time. But she was too close to them and the grenade hit its mark…Her hind legs and pelvis shattered and all I could do was end her pain. So yes, Danny, I had to shoot a member of my own team, Danny, one of the best fucking sailors I ever served with, but she…” his breath hitched. “God, they just do it because they love you. It’s not a conscious decision; they don’t _decide_ to serve their country. It’s no more than a ‘I will always follow you because you’re my human and I trust you.’ So no, Danny, I don’t dislike dogs, but I don’t really want to be near them either because God only knows what they would do for me if I asked.”

“Babe…” Danny breathed.

“Leave the dog in your office, but after this case, he’s gone.” It was a clear order. When nobody moved, Steve’s jaw clenched. “Let’s get to work. We’ve got a job to do.”

* * *

“Where’s the dog?” Steve did not look up from his paperwork. The rest of Five-0 was gone, case solved. Danny swallowed dryly.

“Rachel and Grace took him in. Rachel did not want accept first but Lucky – found his name in his veterinary records – won her over. Score one for the single fathers in the world!” he exclaimed desperately trying to sound nonchalant and happy, but failing miserably.

“That’s nice, Danny,” was the distinctly cool reply. “It’s been a long day… You should go home. Good work, detective,” he added sounding genuine as he directly met Danny’s gaze; the shadow of a smile was there, but his eyes were detached as if he had locked the door that gave access to his inner thoughts and feelings and the New Jersey native hated it. The SEAL’s focus immediately returned to the tasks at hand and Danny could not stand it anymore.

“Please, Steven, I’m sorry,” he begged. “Will you please, _please_ look at me?”

He could see Steve take a deep breath, brazen himself for impact before he looked up properly; his eyes looked haunted.

“I didn’t know. I was being an insensitive jerk. I’m sorry.”

“I never called you a jerk,” contradicted Steve sharply. For a moment, he did not say anything else, but then it seemed to burst out of him. “It’s just… Just once, Danny, just once, I’m asking for some sort of consideration, some basic acceptance of the fact that, before I came here, I was deployed for the majority of my adult life.”

“I always consider…” Danny protested, but Steve quickly rose to his feet.

“No, you don’t. You know I’m not technically a cop, and that I have a military background, so you object to my methods constantly,” Danny opened his mouth to say that his thoughtless comments about Steve and dogs had nothing to do with Steve’s dubious, SuperSEAL tactics of hanging suspects off of roofs, but his partner did not let him. “And I appreciate it; truly, I do because while I may be in command, you know more than I do about being a cop. In a way, for me it’s like going back to being a junior officer looking to an experienced NCO for guidance. I may not always follow it, but I appreciate and listen to it.” Danny frowned because Steve certainly never spelled it out this way, and it was actually quite touching.

“Then, babe, help me out, because I don’t understand…”

God, he hated that smile on Steve’s face because the look in his eyes was just broken.

“You must really think I used to be a heartless son of a bitch before I returned to Hawaii,” the statement was supposed to sound neutral, but Steve’s voice was just barely above a whisper and full of hurt.

“No, Steve, of course I don’t. I think you brought compartmentalization to a whole new level when you were out there,” Danny admitted. “I never thought you were heartless.”

“So, you think I just filed every FUBAR mission under ‘well, that sucks’ and was done with it?”

“That’s not fair, Steve,” the New Jersey native protested quietly. “You never talk to us about what you saw or experienced. How could I possibly know…?”

“If you asked me to,” Steve interrupted, “I could tell you the entire chain of command of US law enforcement and I could give you the names of all twelve precincts of the Newark PD including but not limited to the names of every member of the current NPD command staff as well as the names and records of the ones you served under during your time there. Yes, I checked your file because that is my job, but I also looked up the number of hours you and any other detective with your experience had to spend to get where you were by the time you joined Five-0; what kind of training you received and what areas your training had to be focused on in order to become a homocide detective. Did you ever look up anything about my former occupation? I mean, how can you know me for more than a year and not know that K9 units can be crucial members of a SEAL team? That’s public information, Danny, you can look it up on the internet. It’s just… You blame me for knowing shit about being an officer of the law, but you know _nothing_ about the Navy, although it made me who I am, although I spent my entire adult life in the military. And here is how I know about your lack of interest: if you had bothered to do your research, your first question wouldn’t have been about what my problem with dogs was… You would have asked me if this is how I used to deal with the MWDs and their handlers.”

Danny had not known that he could possibly feel worse halfway through this conversation than he had in the beginning. After giving himself a moment to think, he answered honestly. “I don’t want to know; not because I don’t care, but because I know that you’ve seen some pretty bad things out there and it makes me furious that you had to experience them in the name of our country; the thought of you as a boy, not a man but a boy still, signing up for the Navy and being put through a barrage of challenges, bad experiences, pain and trauma, it… hurts, okay? So, I just decided for both of our sakes that ignorance is bliss. And I was wrong about that, I admit.”

Steve exhaled sharply, all anger sucked out of him. “No matter how painful, I never doubted that joining the Navy was the right thing to do, Danny, but I get it, okay?” He took a shuddering breath. “I wished I had been there when you got divorced and you needed a friend; I wish I could have backed you up when you were a rookie and didn’t know half the things you do these days. I know you feel that, too. I get it. There’s no need to apologize. Come here.” With that, he stepped around his desk and hugged Danny who returned it with his eyes closed in relief.

“I’d just taken over command in my platoon,” Steve whispered as he still held onto Danny. “On that first mission, we lost Milo. The first but not the only sailor to die under my command. I almost refused to have another MWD in my platoon after that, but I knew we needed them for our missions. Daisy was the sweetest thing you could imagine and her handler, Torres, he just fit into the group, so I ran with it. Probably shouldn’t have.” With that, he took a step back and Danny missed the contact already. He also realized that Steve was not entirely honest here.

 “Steve, I know now how much they meant to you and I’m starting to understand how important they are for morale and their other tasks in a SEAL team. But that’s not what’s eating you. What is it?”

The Navy officer turned his head and whispered something too low to understand.

“Pardon me, babe?”

“I insisted, okay?” Steve hissed. “When Joe was CO, we never had any MWDs. He understood what they were good for, but he always warned that the men get too attached, that a handler would walk straight into the line of fire to help the dog and might jeopardize the mission or his fellow men.” Of course, Joe would think that. Danny was starting to think that the guy was one of the reasons why Steve, the man with one of the biggest freaking hearts on the planet, was so careful not to show emotion. “I only saw the benefits, so first thing I did after taking over command was getting Milo and his handler in exchange for one of the experienced men who wanted to serve in another platoon. Training went smoothly, I had no hesitation to bring them with us… I was wrong.”

“You said earlier that Milo died protecting another member of your team.” Steve nodded. “So, you made the right call.”

“I lost a member of my team on my first mission,” Steve countered incredulously. “The handler was removed from my platoon for insulting and attacking a commanding officer, confirming everything Joe told me about the dangers of using MWDs. I… Well, then I refused to obtain a new handler and MWD at first, but then Torres and Daisy came along and I couldn’t say no. She was already experienced and handed off to Torres who had just graduated and their teamwork was outstanding.” Steve smiled at the memory. “She should’ve been able to come home.”

“I know, babe. They all do.” He sighed. “Who’s with your platoon now? Torres still with them?”

“Yeah, thankfully,” answered Steve, his lips forming the hint of a smile. “He had high hopes in Buster who’s basically just a pup compared to Daisy, only three years old, but he was not quite calm enough for the kind of work we do, so Buster’s now with another unit who need dogs with a lot of speed and power. He switched to Athena, a five-year-old veteran who’s amazing under pressure, but what makes her brilliant is her patience when there is no action. My platoon’s currently stationed in Coronado where Torres and Athena are helping with the training of two new pups, Apollo, two years old, and Kona, his sister, one of whom will be replacing Athena in about a year.”

“So, from having a platoon without any MWDs, you have established a K9 unit good enough to train other SEAL dogs. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Ergo just another indication that you were right and Joe was dead wrong, correct?”

Steve smirked shyly before he nodded, “I guess that is correct. I just wish there had been no losses at all.”

“Me too, babe. Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Pueo update is on the way, I promise.


End file.
